Friday, June 10, 2016

The Earliest Portions of the Hebrew Bible: the Ketef Hinnom Silver Scrolls

Two small silver scrolls, found in
Ketef Hinnom on the western side of Jerusalem, and “dated to the mid-seventh century B. C.,”[1]
contain parts of Deuteronomy 7:9[2]
and Numbers 6:22-27 on two small silver sheets. (When unrolled the larger is
about 1 inch wide by 4 inches long and the smaller is about 1/2 inch wide by
1–1/2 inches long).

Deuteronomy 7:9:

Know therefore that the LORD thy God, he is God, the faithful God, which keepeth
covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments to a
thousand generations;

The scrolls were
discovered with other items in the burial cave of a wealthy and prominent
family.Pottery in the cave dates as far
back as the seventh century,[3]
confirming the 7th century date for the scrolls.Furthermore, scroll one’s outer edges were
worn and split, implying it had been used for a long time before being buried.[4]Paleography likewise indicates a date between
the 9th-7th centuries, and “before the sixth century
B.C., hence somewhere in the eighth and seventh.”[5]In conclusion, “the convergence of
archaeological, paleographic, and orthographic data favors a date around the
seventh century B.C. for the composition of this document.”[6]

A picture of scroll #1:[7]

A picture of scroll #2:[8]

The significance (in
part) of these silver scrolls can be illustrated in the following way.Let us imagine that someone claimed that the
Greek historian Herodotus did not write his Histories
c. 440 B. C., but that his histories were compiled 1,000 years later by an
anonymous person who used sources we will call J, E, D, and P.Advocates of this (imaginary) view would
point out that the earliest actual substantial manuscripts of Herodotus date to
the 10th-14th centuries A. D.Therefore, they might argue, Herodotus’s Histories were not really written by him
c. 440 B. C., but were compiled c. A. D. 560 from the J, E, D, and P sources
for Herodotus.However, we have a number
of fragments of Herodotus, each of which are papyri that are “fragments of a
page,”[9]
dating to the 1st-3rd centuries A. D.What is the natural conclusion from the
existence of fragmentary papyri of Herodotus that date to the 1st-3rd
centuries A. D.?The natural conclusion
is that it is impossible to date the composition of Herodotus’s Histories any later than the 1st
century A. D., and that perhaps advocates of the JEDP theory of Herodotus ought
to consider that the work might just have been written by “Herodotus of
Halicarnassus”[10]
as it claims.

Advocates of the JEDP theory of the
Bible argue that the Pentateuch was compiled largely from four alleged source
documents—J, E, D, and P—and that these four documents were patched together by
an unknown editor or editors “to produce JEDP by about 400 B.C.; and the
Pentateuch in its extant form emerged about 200 B.C.”[11]There are huge numbers of fatal problems to
the JEDP theory—such as, for example, that it is utterly contrary to the
internal evidence of the books of Moses,[12] that
no fragment of J, E, D, or P has ever been found, and that no extant work of
history, or any other extant document of any kind, breaths the slightest hint
of the existence of these mythical documents until modern times when it was
developed by rationalists with a bias against Biblical inspiration.

The Ketef Hinnom silver scrolls
constitute another extremely difficult problem for opponents of Mosaic
authorship and advocates of JEDP.Why
are fragments of the Pentateuch extant centuries before it was supposedly
created?An advocate of JEDP might reply
that Numbers 6:24-26 and Deuteronomy 1:7 existed in some hypothetical source,
but the Pentateuch as a whole did not exist.This reply is fraught with the same sort of extremely serious problems
plaguing the JEDP theory as a whole.First, Deuteronomy 1:7 was allegedly part of a D document forged in 621
B. C. and falsely ascribed to Moses.[13]But how could the scrolls quote Deuteronomy
1:7 before the alleged D document was created?Second, Numbers 6:21-27 allegedly “formed part of P,”[14] but
P was allegedly composed centuries after the date of the silver scrolls.[15]How could the scrolls quote from P if P did
not come into existence until centuries later?Third, the presence of both passages in a single scroll indicates that
they were viewed as part of a single document—the Pentateuch.Rather than being the product of hypothetical
source documents that have not a scintilla of extant archaeological evidence
for them, the Ketef Hinnom silver scrolls are very strong evidence in favor of
the claim that the Pentateuch is exactly what it repeatedly and regularly
claims—the product of Moses, writing under the inspiration of the one true God,
Jehovah, after the exodus of Israel from Egypt.

Of course, when the JEDP theory
received its classical formulation from Wellhausen in the 1800s when the many
archaeological proofs against it did not yet exist.Those who wish to maintain JEDP against the
ever-growing tide of archaeological evidence to the contrary might argue that
Deuteronomy 1:7 existed, and Numbers 6:24-26 existed, but the book in which
they are found—the Pentateuch—did not exist.Such a contrived answer, however, manifests extremely inconsistent
historiography.Would the JEDP advocate
make the same claim for Herodotus?Would
they make it for any other ancient writer for whom we possess small early
fragments and much later larger manuscripts?Why are fragments from Herodotus proof that his Histories existed, but fragments from the Pentateuch are not proof that
the Pentateuch existed?

Furthermore, the Ketef Hinnom silver
scrolls validate the existence of predictive prophecy in the Bible.The Pentateuch very plainly predicts the
Babylonian exile (e. g., Deuteronomy 28), an event that took place many years
after these silver scrolls were made.The scrolls evidence that the Pentateuch existed in the seventh century
B. C., and, therefore, that predictive prophecy exists in the Bible, validating
Scripture as the Word of God.

In conclusion, the Ketef Hinnom
silver scrolls validate once again the words of Hebrew Union College President
Nelson Glueck:

It may be stated categorically
that no archaeological discovery has ever controverted a Biblical reference.
Scores of archaeological findings have been made which confirm in clear outline
or exact detail historical statements in the Bible.And, by the same token, proper evaluation of
Biblical descriptions has often led to amazing discoveries. They form tesserae
[tiles] in the vast mosaic of the Bible’s incredibly correct historical memory.[16]

The Bible has been
confirmed by archaeology over and over again because it is the very Word of
God, the revelation of the holy Creator of the Universe who is truth and who
cannot lie.

Note: we discussed the Ketef Hinnom silver scrolls, and many other things relevant to the preservation of the Bible, in the course on Biblical preservation, manuscript evidence, and Bible texts and versions I have recently been teaching. The first few lectures can be viewed online by clicking here and more are coming.

[12]For
example, Dr. K. A. Kitchen (Professor Emeritus of Egyptology and Honorary
Research Fellow of the School of Archaeology, Classics, and Oriental Studies at
the Univesrity of Liverpool, England) notes:

[O]n the basis of real,
genuinely ancient, firsthand documentation from the third to late first
millennia b.c. we must [note that]
. . . the literary profile of Gen. 1–11 basically identical with the profiles
of comparable Mesopotamian literature relating to creation, flood-catastrophe,
and long “linkup” human successions—and, as a search of the ancient literatures
shows, as a topos in vogue creatively only
in the early second millennium b.c.
(and earlie[r]), not later[.] . . . [M]ain features in the much-maligned
patriarchal narratives fit so well (and often, exclusively) into the framework supplied by the independent,
objective data of the early second millennium[.] (E.g., details in Gen. 14;
Elamite activity in the west, uniquely then; basic slave price of twenty
shekels for Joseph; etc.) This . . . comes straight from a huge matrix of
field-produced data. . . [T]he human and other phenomena at the exodus show clearly
Egyptian traits (not Palestinian, not Neo-Babylonian . . . of the thirteenth
century . . . AND NOT LATER. . . . Tabernacle-type worship structures are known
in the Semitic world (Mari, Ugarit, Timna) specifically for the nineteenth to
twelfth centuries; the Sinai tabernacle is based directly on Egyptian
technology of the thirtieth to thirteenth centuries (with the concept extending
into the eleventh). The Sinai/plains of Moab covenant (much of
Exodus-Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Josh. 24) is squarely tied in format and content
exclusively to the massively
documented format of the fourteenth–thirteenth centuries . . . after which the
formats were wholly different; we have over ninety original exemplars that
settle the matter decisively[.] .. .

In short,
to explain what exists in our Hebrew documents we need a Hebrew leader who had
had experience of life at the Egyptian court, mainly in the East Delta . . .
including knowledge of treaty-type documents and their format, as well as of
traditional Semitic legal/social usage more familiar to his own folk. In other
words, somebody distressingly like that old “hero” of biblical tradition,
Moses, is badly needed at this point, to make any sense of the situation as we
have it. Or somebody in his position of the same or another name. On the basis
of the series of features in Exodus to Deuteronomy that belong to the late
second millennium and not later,
there is, again, no other viable option. (K. A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament [Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge,
U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2006], 459–460, 295)

2 comments:

Gary Webb
said...

Very interesting post. Thanks.I gather from reading an article online [http://www.biblearchaeology.org/post/2010/01/06/The-Blessing-of-the-Silver-Scrolls.aspx#Article] that this scroll fragment does not contain the Hebrew vowel pointing. Is that correct, & if so, what information does that provide on the argument that the vowel pointings were a part of the original Hebrew text?

Thank you for the question. You are correct that these scrolls do not have vowel points. That does not prove, though, that they did not exist back then, any more than the existence of a Hebrew document in modern Israel without vowels proves that they do not exist now. Please see pgs. 43-46 of my essay here:

WORD OF TRUTH CONFERENCE

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I got lots of learnin when I was in cemetery. I also gots books I try to read. I has preecht throo most of the books of the Bible spositorally. I is marreed and has 4 youngins---3 is gurlz. Me am indipendint Babtist. Pleeez reed my blog.